Posts tagged as:

baking

Heavy Wholegrain Sourdough

by Linda on July 26, 2011

I’m loving my everyday sourdough these days. I make a small loaf every second day (since there’s only two of us to eat it on everyday days). It’s getting heavier and heavier as I get the knack!  I’ve got into a rhythm  that is near enough to effortless –  certainly well worth the effort – about 15 minutes all up of actual work spread over 24 hours.  And that yields me the kind of bread that is tempting enough to inspire me to take lunch to work, and healthy enough to eat as much as I like (and I like).

The system is still the same as my Everyday Sourdough.  These days though, the 6.30 am cooked porridge mix is

  • a handful of whole oats (oat groats), cooked for 5 minutes or so, then add
  • a handful of hulled millet and keep cooking for another 5 minutes or so, then add
  • a handful of quinoa and cook for a few minutes more to absorb all the water.

The 7.00 am dough mix has

  • a cup of sourdough starter fed with unbleached bakers’ flour
  • rye flour
  • oat bran
  • linseed meal
  • the porridge mix (above)
  • a teaspoon of salt
  • and enough organic stoneground wholemeal flour (15%protein) to make a kneadable dough

Then the top is sprinkled liberally with sesame seeds and poppy seeds.

It’s a real wholegrain feast with attitude, and enough B vitamins to give me a whole day’s supply in a couple of slices. I haven’t worked out the exact cost per loaf, but even with all these goodies, it’s not much more than $1 a loaf – a fraction of the price of quality bread in the supermarket.

Though I’m experimenting with quinoa and oats and linseeds and sesame seeds, at the moment none of the ingredients are coming from the garden, but all are from sustainable farming done within a few hundred kilometres. Over winter I’ve been baking in the wood stove, which we have going for heating and hot water anyhow, so there’s no fuel use at all. Over summer I’ll use the gas oven, but if I can coincide with when I have it on for dinner or baking anyhow the fuel cost will add very little.

I’m loving it on so many levels, but hot from the oven spread with honey is up there!

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Carambola and Macadamia Frangipane Tarts

by Linda on July 5, 2011

Carambolas (Star Fruit) don’t appear in fruit shops much, and I wonder why?  They’re a really nice fruit, sweet and juicy and full of vitamin C and potassium. If you live in an area where they will grow, they fruit prolifically in mid-winter and you are likely to have a glut of them.

If you don’t live in a carambola growing region, you might like to adapt this recipe.  It works with any sweet, juicy fruit in season the same time as macas – which means late autumn to early spring. With the sweetness of the carambola and the oil in the nuts, these need very little sugar or butter so they’re the kind of treat you can comfortably pack in a school lunch box or have in a mid-afternoon break from too-inactive work!

The Recipe:

Macadamia Meal

First crack your macadamias then use a food processor to blend them into a fairly fine meal. You need 60 grams, or half a cup of macadamia meal for the pastry and another 90 grams or three quarters of a cup for the filling.  Fresh nuts in shell are a different thing to the stale old nuts you find in packets in midsummer, so it is worth making your own.  This tool makes macadamia nuts a realistic everyday food.

Macadamia Shortcrust Pastry

This pastry is so easy, so delicious, and so healthy that you can eat pastry every day and not feel guilty!

In a food processor, blend together:

  • ½ cup wholemeal plain flour
  • ½ cup (60 gm) cup maca meal
  • 1 egg yolk (keep the white for the filling)
  • 1 dessertspoon butter

Add just enough water – a couple of dessertspoons full – to make a soft dough.

If your kitchen is warm, you may need to put the dough in the fridge for a few minutes (while you make the filling) so it will roll out easily.

Flour your bench top and roll the dough out. Cut out 8 saucer sized rounds and use them to line 8 holes in a muffin tin or 8  little tart tins.

Bake for around 15 minutes in a moderate oven until the pastry is firm but not yet browning.  (I don’t bother with beans or rice or anything to blind bake – it stays pretty flat without it).

The Macadamia Carambola Frangipane

You don’t need to wash the food processor.

Slice up 4 carambolas and reserve 8 nice big slices from the middle of the fruits for decorating.

Blend together into a paste:

  • 90 grams carambolas (about 4 fruit after the middle slices have been reserved for decorating as above)
  • ¾ cup (90 grams) maca meal
  • 1 dessertspoon wholemeal plain flour
  • 1 dessertspoon butter
  • 1½ dessertspoons honey
  • ½ teaspoon cardamom powder

Beat an egg white until peaks form, then gently fold in the macadamia-carambola paste.

Assembling and Baking

Spoon the filling into the shells.  The filling will puff up but it will rise up rather than out so you can fill quite full.  Decorate each tart with a slice of carambola.

Bake for around half an hour in a moderate oven until puffed up and golden.

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Everyday Sourdough

by Linda on April 26, 2011

I’ve cracked it –  everyday bread – “everyday” meaning healthy enough for every day (even for someone too inactive to be spendthrift with carbohydrates), and “everyday” meaning easy enough to bother making even on a workday (when all I am looking forward to when I get home is a hot bath and a glass of wine).

Why bother? I’ve had a crush on sourdough for a while now, ever since Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial converted me.  I like a grainy, textured, hearty bread, and after a few goes I had a bread I was so addicted to I couldn’t go back to the supermarket.  But I couldn’t get it to fit in around a workday.

Which is why I’m so happy. Finally I have found a low effort routine for making it work on days when I have to leave the house by 8 am and don’t get home till after 5 pm.

This is a heavy, grainy bread, nutty and chewy, and wholegrain enough to be healthy all on its own.  It takes just 15 minutes to make, but that 15 minutes is spread over 24 hours.  The trick is just getting into a rythum.  I have been making a loaf every second or third day.

(If you don’t have sourdough starter, start asking around.  Since you have to divide and feed it regularly, anyone who has some is very likely to be willing to give you some.  Somewhere within six degrees of separation, there’s likely to be sourdough. Since I’ve got into it, it’s amazing how many sourdough addicts I’ve met.)

8 pm – Feed the Starter and Make a Sponge

Take the sourdough starter out of the fridge.  I keep mine in a jar with the lid loosely on it, so I have to tighten the lid before shaking the jar and pouring half of it (a cupful) into a bowl.

Mix 1½ cups of water and 1½ cups of bakers flour (I use a stick blender, and Laucke Wallaby Unbleached Bakers Flour, which I can buy in 5 kg bags at the supermarket).  Pour half of it back into the starter jar to top it back up.  Add the other half to the starter in the bowl, along with a teaspoon of treacle.

Put the starter back in the fridge with the lid on loosely. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and leave out on the kitchen bench.

6.30 am - Cook Some Whole Grain

I put the coffee pot on, and while waiting for it, put ¼ cup (2 handfuls) of whole wheat grains on to boil in 1½ cups of water with a good teaspoon of salt.  Boil for 5 minutes, then add ¼ cup of whole millet. Boil for another 5 minutes, then add ¼ cup of steel cut oats and turn the stove off.

7.00 am - Make a Dough

The grain will have cooled and absorbed all the water, and the sourdough in the bowl will be frothy. Mix them with ½ cup bran, 1 cup rye flour,  and 1 cup bakers flour. Sometimes I also add some barley flakes, pepitas, sunflower seeds or linseeds.

Flour the bench liberally and tip the mix onto it.  Knead very briefly (2 or 3 minutes), adding as much flour as necessary to get a soft dough that is not too sticky.

Put a good swig of olive oil in a clean bowl and put the dough ball in it, swirling it around to coat.  Cover with the clean cloth again and leave on the bench for the day.

5.30 pm - Knock Down the Dough

The dough will have easily doubled in bulk.  Tip it onto the bench and knead very very briefly, just to knock it down and make it into a loaf shape.  Put it in an oiled baking tin.  Sprinkle the top very liberally with sesame seeds and/or poppy seeds. Slash the top with a sharp knife to give it room to rise. Cover with the clean cloth again.

7.30 pm – Bake

The bread has risen again to double its size.  If I leave it too much longer, it starts to deflate again. Put it on the second shelf (that is, not right at the top) of  a cold oven and turn the oven on to medium. (Sorry, I can’t be more precise – my oven is antique – but I think it is forgiving).

8. 10 pm – Begin checking.

Take it out when the crust is nice and brown and it sounds hollow when knocked. Mine takes about 50 minutes from a cold oven to cooked.

I know there’s lots of fantastic sourdough bakers out there – I’d love to hear what you think. Have I missed some tricks?

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Apple Oat Slice

April 6, 2011

Last week of the school term, and it’s been hard finding space for Muesli Bar Challenge recipes in amongst everything else.  But this week is the non-planting week by the lunar calendar, and though I don’t follow it very religiously, it is also a bit too wet for planting (ironically – mostly I complain about it [...]

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Zucchini Ginger Muffins

March 2, 2011

I promised there would be more Muesli Bar Challenge recipes this year but there’s been too much else to write about.  But a golden zucchini that got away inspired me.  What do you do with a kilo of zucchini? This recipe is in my handwritten book as Wwoofer’s Zuke Bread because the original came to me [...]

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Apricot and Semolina Tarts

December 6, 2010

The local Farmers’ Market this week had apricots, from within 100 miles.  Seduced by memories of apricots I had in Tasmania years ago I bought a kilo.  Sadly it just retaught me a lesson I know so well:  eating local is not just an ethical response to the need to reduce transport of everything, by [...]

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Peach Scrolls

November 29, 2010

The year speeds up so much at this stage.  It’s hard to believe there are only two more  Muesli Bar Challenges before the end of term, and the end of a whole year of weekly recipes.  The Challenge is year’s worth of lunch box baking that is based on fresh food in season, healthy, robust [...]

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Lunchbox Peach Sbrisoletta

November 22, 2010

Early season peaches are just coming into season here.  I don’t really grow stonefruit – we are smack bang in fruit fly territory and it’s just too much work.  I have a couple of volunteer seedling peach trees though, and although most years the birds, possums, and flying foxes get most of the fruit,  the [...]

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Blueberry and Lemon Ricotta Slice

November 15, 2010

Our blueberry bushes are bearing and the farm up the road is selling bags of blueberry seconds so this is the  second in the   Muesli Bar Challenge series featuring blueberries.  Last week’s muffins are a hard act to follow.  This recipe is just as healthy, low in fat and sugar and featuring ricotta, yoghurt, eggs and [...]

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